NPE in spray-json because of recursive implicits (

Question

Perhaps I discovered a bug in spray-json. I get Null Pointer Exception when I'm trying to get json of an object that has field of type of itself. Example is:

case class TestItem(subitems: Option[List[TestItem]])

object MyJsonProtocol extends DefaultJsonProtocol {
  implicit val testItemFormat: RootJsonFormat[TestItem] = jsonFormat(TestItem, "subitems")
}

import MyJsonProtocol._

object TestNPE {
  def main(args: Array[String]) {

    val subitems = List(TestItem(None))
    val item: TestItem = TestItem(Option(subitems))
    val jsonAst = item.toJson
    val json = jsonAst.prettyPrint
    println(json)
  }
}

And call-stack is this

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at spray.json.PimpedAny.toJson(package.scala:40)
    at spray.json.CollectionFormats$$anon$1$$anonfun$write$1.apply(CollectionFormats.scala:26)
    at spray.json.CollectionFormats$$anon$1$$anonfun$write$1.apply(CollectionFormats.scala:26)
    at scala.collection.TraversableLike$$anonfun$map$1.apply(TraversableLike.scala:244)
    at scala.collection.TraversableLike$$anonfun$map$1.apply(TraversableLike.scala:244)
    at scala.collection.immutable.List.foreach(List.scala:309)
    at scala.collection.TraversableLike$class.map(TraversableLike.scala:244)
    at scala.collection.AbstractTraversable.map(Traversable.scala:105)
    at spray.json.CollectionFormats$$anon$1.write(CollectionFormats.scala:26)
    at spray.json.CollectionFormats$$anon$1.write(CollectionFormats.scala:25)
    at spray.json.PimpedAny.toJson(package.scala:40)
    at spray.json.StandardFormats$OptionFormat.write(StandardFormats.scala:34)
    at spray.json.StandardFormats$OptionFormat.write(StandardFormats.scala:32)
    at spray.json.ProductFormats$class.productElement2Field(ProductFormats.scala:473)
    at spray.json.MyJsonProtocol$.productElement2Field(TestNPE.scala:5)
    at spray.json.ProductFormats$$anon$1.write(ProductFormats.scala:32)
    at spray.json.ProductFormats$$anon$1.write(ProductFormats.scala:30)
    at spray.json.PimpedAny.toJson(package.scala:40)
    at spray.json.TestNPE$.main(TestNPE.scala:18)
    at spray.json.TestNPE.main(TestNPE.scala)

Sooo I tried to fix it myself but my knowledge of Scala is not strong enough yet. NPE happens here when it's attempting to convert inner TestItem. Function parameter write at that moment is null.

Could you please explain to me why it doesn't use my implicit instead ? I see in the debugger that instead of using my implicit write contains value of some magic field evidence$x$y which changes as it goes deeper in calling chain. I don't know what it is. I feel like it's something related to context bound but reading relevant chapter didn't help.

Answer 1

Well, I should have been more attentive. I had to use lazyFormat wrapper.